A Happy Accident

us realize. It was in eighteen sixty one and the patriarch of the Riley family, Reuben, left home to join the Union Army. He became the captain of the first Company of Indiana Volunteers from Hancock County. Reuben was injured during the Battle of Rich Mountain in Virginia and was sent home to his family once he recovered. Heard. Not long after Reuben's returned to Greenfield, Indiana, their household grew

by one. An orphan named Mary Alice Smith came to live with them in the winter of eighteen sixty one. She was about eleven years old, but her early life is a mystery. We don't know the circumstances that brought her to the Riley family, but we do know that she was born in Liberty, Indiana and was about the same age as one of the Riley boys, James. We also know that she wasn't an orphan, at least not in the way that we would think. Her parents death

hadn't been the beginning of her troubles. They had separated when she was four years old, and she was sent to live with her grandmother. It would be another four years before her parents actually died. Mary Alice, who everyone just called Ali, was forced to bounce from one extended family member to the next until she ran out and had to rely on the kindness of strangers. At that time, there weren't many institutions that took in abandoned kids, especially

not on the frontier. Adoption wasn't common, and the foster care system didn't exist yet, so many children like Ali were sent to live with families looking for an extra pair of hands to help around the house. Ruben Riley, well known to be a kind and generous man, was thinking about returning to the battlefield, and he knew that his wife would need help while he was gone. The bargain was always pretty simple. A child would be taken in and exchange for bed and board. They would do chores,

look after children, and generally earn their keep. Ali had boarded with other families before the Riley's, so she likely knew what to expect. Reuben Riley's son James, remembered Ali's arrival well, later describing her as a slender wisp of a girl with spindle ankles, barely dressed for winter weather in a calico skirt in a summer hat. She had slim, blue veined wrists that she tossed among those loose and

ragged tresses of her yellow hair. But what really stood out to James was the hollow, pale blue eyes, which followed every motion with an alertness that sugged rust did a somewhat suspicious mind. Maybe she didn't trust the new family, or maybe she didn't trust anyone. Happily, Alie warmed up to the Riley's and soon became the children's favorite playmate. They complained whenever chores took her away from them, and

delighted in her infectious sense of humor and optimism. She was even known to say, I'm mighty glad I'm come to live in this here house. Ali's joy in little things deeply impacted James, who recalled how she turned her chores into little games, talked to herself, and how she found their grand curving staircase majestic. James carried her memory with him even after she left the family. Many years later, in a now grown up and respected author, James Whitcomb

Riley published a poem called elf Child. The poem described the day a little wisp of a child came to live with his family, the chores she did, and the wild scary stories she told. Riley public the poem in the Indianapolis Journal, but changed the title to Little Orphan Alley to better remember his old friend. But then something bizarre happened when the poem went to the printers, although no one knows how. Maybe the type setter wasn't pain

enough attention. Maybe James, like some of us, had handwriting that sent teachers into fits of despair. In any case, the l's were replaced with ends, and little Orphan Annie was born. From there, Annie seemed to take on a life of her own. In n eighteen, she became a silent film character, the subject of a song arrangement, and,

of course, most famously, the nineteen four comic strip. The New York Daily News published the first strip that year about Little Orphan Annie, her dog Sandy, and Daddy Warbucks. Annie had grown far and beyond what James Riley had likely expected when he had written a poem about a childhood friend. I wonder if either James or Ali expected to see Annie one day make her debut on Broadway or grace the silver screen. Not once, not twice, but

four times. Riley published other poems about Ali over the years. Where is Mary Alice Smith? Being one of the most well known, he wouldn't have had to look too hard to find her, though she worked in a tavern briefly after leaving the Riley family, but eventually married and settled down with her husband, John Wesley Gray in Hancock County, Indiana. But there's wasn't the viral world that we live in today. She didn't know the poem was about her until nineteen fifteen.

Ali outlived James by several years, surrounded by children and grandchildren who might as well have delighted in the Indiana tradition of reading Little Orphan Annie around Halloween. Despite or perhaps because of the best efforts of ye old auto correct Orphan Annie has gone on to inspire plenty of people with her cheerfulness and optimism, even another Indiana author, John Gruel and his popular character Raggedy Ann. But that's

a story for another your day. Every so often doctors come out with studies declaring certain foods as either being healthy or unhealthy. Two cups of coffee a day can prevent heart disease, but the caffeine can spike your anxiety. Eggs are high in vitamins like B twelve and ribel flavor that can also negatively affect your cholesterol. It's never fun finding out the foods and beverages we love the most may actually be hurting us. But nowadays we can

quickly learn the truth and adjust our diets accordingly. That wasn't the case, however. In nineteenth century Tokyo, also known as Edo, a disease was running rampant through the country, especially among the emperor's family and other nobles. Back then, they called it kaka, but today it's known by the

name barry Berry. Unlike other illnesses which would often target the poor, barry Berry was killing Japanese nobility instead, and that led to its other nicknames, The Edo sickness, or the affliction of eddo Someone with berry Berry would often get symptoms such as swollen legs, sluggish speech, paralysis, and eventually death, but nobody knew the disease is caused at the time. It struck the Emperor's aunt, Princess Kazu in the late eighteen hundreds and kicked off a massive investigation

into its origin. Her husband had also died from a similar medical mystery ten years prior, possibly the same disease. Some doctors first believed barry Berry was caused by spending too much time on damp ground, while others prescribed fasting and various homeopathic remedies to cure the condition. A samurai afflicted with the disease agreed to try the herbal remedy one doctor prescribed to him, and he died months later.

Mug Warts, an aromatic flowering plant, was also sometimes applied to the backs of patients and then burnt off the skin, but it didn't work. As time passed, more of japan Ends upper echelon continued to perish from barry Berry until a doctor named Kinda Heiro Takaki took up the cause. Takaki, who had enlisted in the Navy in eighteen seventy two, witnessed the same illness strike the Japanese sailors that he had served with back then. His superiors hadn't thought anything

of it, but Takaki knew something was going on. He eventually left the Navy and enrolled in medical school in England. Once he was finally in a position to address the issue, he took action. As the director of the Tokyo Naval Hospital and later the vice director of the Naval Medical Bureau, Takaki started talking with Japanese sailors afflicted by barry Berry, and he made some important observations. First, prisoners suffered from

the disease more than anyone else on the ship. Sailors and low level officers were affected slightly less, and higher ups almost never. He also noticed that the officers aid a diet that was higher in protein than that of the prisoners, and attributed that to the cause of barry Berry's proliferation among the lower ranks, who almost never eight protein.

The disease was also strangely limited to Japan. European and American sailors were not affected by berry Berry, but their bread heavy diets couldn't be adopted by the Japanese sailors. They found it off putting. Still, Takaki wanted to get to the bottom of the issue. Then around eighteen eighty two, he got his chance. A training ship called the Usual had been loaded with Japanese cadets and navigated all around the Pacific Rim. It landed in places such as South America,

New Zealand, and Hawaii before coming home. Upon its return, the re Usual had lost twenty five members of its three hundred and seventy six person crew to berry berry. Almost half the people on board had developed some form of it as well, so Takaki's new protein rich diet was greenlit aboard another training ship, the Sukuba, which set sail in February of eighteen eighty four with three hundred

and thirty three sailors on board. There was a lot writing on this journey, as Takaki had assured the Emperor that his plan would succeed. Word came back from the ship seven months later in a telegram it read, not one patient, set your mind at ease. When the Tacuba finally returned, the results spoke for themselves. Fourteen crew members had developed barry Berry and nobody had died. The only reason those fourteen had even contracted it was because they

hadn't been following Takaki's diet regiment. After his successful trial, the good Doctor had carte blanche to alter the diets of the entire naval fleet, and in doing so he managed to reduce reports of berry berry by percent, and nobody else died from it again. Sadly, Takaki's methods were shunned by others in the medical community, and the army

was still dealing with berry berry outbreaks regularly. He had tried mixing barley with their daily rice to up their protein intake, but many saw barley as a holdover from ancient traditional methods rather than something a cutting edge Western doctor might prescribe. What nobody, including Takaki, realised, however, was that one specific food was slowly killing everyone. It was a staple of their cuisine and relatively inexpensive, so it

was served everywhere. The culprit white rice. White rice was made through a painstaking process of husking and polishing, resulting in a bright white grain. Unfortunately, that process also stripped the rice of its natural thiamine. Since white rice was a symbol of higher status within Japanese society. For a long time, berry berry mostly affected the nobility. It was also served on board navy vessels in the eighteen eighties as a primary source of energy and sustenance, causing a

B one shortage in many Japanese sailors. And that's what barry berry really is, a vitamin B one or thiamine deficiency. Takaki had figured out that more protein was the way to combat the disease, even if he never understood why the rice was the problem, but his work did help future researchers dis cover the root cause of barry Barry. It also earned him a place among Japanese nobility in nineteen o five, as well as a new nickname, the Barley Baron, and following his death in nineteen twenty and

Antarctic Peninsula was named Kakaki Promontory after him. He is the only Japanese person to have such an honor. That's what you get when you stick to a problem like white on rice. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me, Aaron Manky

in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.